The President before the Farm Demonstration Agents

I am extremely glad to have this opportunity of expressing my great interest in this work, an interest which is not of recent origin. I have been interested in it for a great many years. It constitutes the kind of work which it seems to me is the only kind which generates real education, that is to say, the demonstrative process and the personal touch of the man who does the demonstrating. I believe, and, of course, I am not alone in the belief, that you are handling the economic foundations of our life. It is a matter of some chagrin that our farmers, in some parts of the country at any rate, have not been producing as much per acre as the farmers in the old and so-called worn-out soils of the older continents, and it is a matter of pride with me that we should now be overtaking their lead in that respect and vindicating the intelligence and enterprise of the American farmer all over the country. I congratulate you upon your opportunity to do a work so fundamentally important to the country at large.